Ashoka Fellow Yordanos Eyoel
Ashoka Fellow since 2024   |   United States

Yordanos Eyoel

Keseb
Yordanos Eyoel is building a transnational ecosystem for learning, collaboration, and innovation to counter authoritarianism and advance inclusive and resilient democracies.
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This description of Yordanos Eyoel's work was prepared when Yordanos Eyoel was elected to the Ashoka Fellowship in 2024.

Introduction

Yordanos Eyoel is building a transnational ecosystem for learning, collaboration, and innovation to counter authoritarianism and advance inclusive and resilient democracies.

The New Idea

Yordanos’s founding insight is that if ideas and strategies for dismantling democracies can be imported and exported, so too can strategies to strengthen democracies. And until we build transnational pro-democracy ecosystems, we will always be two steps behind anti-democratic forces, which haveRead more

The Problem

Liberal democracy is under siege in the United States and around the globe. According to Freedom House, just 20 percent of the world’s population now lives in a “free” country, the smallest proportion since 1995. This marks the culmination of a persistent trend towards autocracy, with 18Read more

The Strategy

Yordanos's strategy is to build a global pro-democracy ecosystem for cross-country learning, collaboration, and innovation to counter authoritarianism and advance resilient democracies. With democracy at an inflection point, it is precisely the bifurcated, siloed nature of national andRead more

The Person

Yordanos was born during the longest civil war in Ethiopia and grew up in a family that instilled the value of political activism -- even when it required extreme personal sacrifice. Yordanos was raised by her mother, grandmother, and grandfather, who was the architect of the Ethiopian adultRead more